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RETRO-SPECTIVE: HOUSEWIFE FASHION

1972 - Return To 'Sane Dressing' Suits Designer Anne Klein

NEW YORK - Designer Anne Klein, a keep-fit nut, recently spent two weeks at that
posh $150- a-day San Diego spa, La Costa. Was she surprised to watch affluent
dinner goers head for the dining room wearing simple shirt-skirt getups rather
than show-off clothes.

It was the first clue that flamboyant theatrical clothes - all by-products of
the hippie influence - were dead duds. What's more, spa seekers were a dramatic
cross between secure socially registered types from everywhere and gorgeous
starlets bent on crashing Hollywood by keeping physically fit.

Anne, who has had
her business only four years but sells to 1,500 stores coast to coast, soon
became convinced that: "There's a great return to sane dressing. It's a reversal
and reaction against the total disregard for attractiveness that we saw in the
60s. All the junk is gone!"

The impression that the 70s would be fashion's
classic decade was given further impetus when gypsy-prone Ali McGraw came into
the Klein showroom and ordered: One turtleneck with knickers. Two tweed wrap
skirts and pullover. One evening shirtwaist.

Anne, an inveterate traveler, then went off to Acapulco. She
was invited to a party at the Gloria Guinness estate near Las Spricas. Anne, who
is Mrs. Chip Rubinstein in private life, was introduced to her hostess by her
married name. When the subject inevitably turned to fashion, Gloria
announced this season she had by-passed the Paris couture to invest in pared
down separates by someone called Anne Klein. "Gloria nearly keeled over when she
found out that she was talking to Anne Klein," says Anne Klein.

As soon as Anne
got back to the job, Cyd Charisse breezed into the showroom to order a new
separates wardrobe for: herself and best pal, Dinah Shore. Cyd sputtered that
all the mature elegantes in her circle including Dinah were bored silly with fashion's penchant for costumes.

"The series of
reactions turned out to be a fascinating barometer," says Anne. "When my
husband and I put the pieces together, the tendency toward sane fashion was
an across-the-board trend. It was a desire of the young and old. Rich and
not-so-rich. The famous and ordinary."

Brooklyn-born Anne, who used to design
for Jr. Sophisticates and then quit because she was "fed up" with fashion, got
back into the business when her husband decided to quit manufacturing shopping
bags to promote Klein-designed clothes. It was both real and psychic support.
Three months as a homebody turned out to be solitary confinement.

At first Anne
and Chip tried to expand the concept of "fashion" from clothes to everything
that projected style. Anne talked with airline executives to create fashionable
plane interiors. No soap. Chip talked to auto makers in Detroit with similar
ideas. It was thanks but no thanks. Anne approached kitchen appliance giants
who listened intently and announced that she was ahead of her time - but please
come back in a few years.

"What I really wanted was to redesign the world," says
Anne, a pint-sized lady who. has more self confidence and experience "than
formal training. She didn't go past Brooklyn Girls Commercial High School. But
at 16 she was a $28-a-week sketcher for Seventh Ave. fashion houses and
absorbing the scene, learning, dreaming.

She's still got the same kind of open
mind. And, while stores were flooding her company with mammoth orders, she
decided to change fashion within its own sphere — and down with limitations.

"Women in a hurry don't want to waste time changing clothes," says Anne. Which
is, of course, the secret to Anne Klein's success. All her clothes are sleek,
unfussy items that make transitions with the addition of accessories.

Anne talks
about 1972 being the year of clean dressing — meaning that unnecessary
frou-frou and details have been erased from clothes.

"The world is complicated
enough," says Anne. "There's war, polluted air, campus unrest, prison violence.
Today there's a new regard for simple dressing that is reactionary. It's a
personal projection of life style free from fuss."